AGILAN THANI THE ''ALLIGATOR''

       

    Every Malaysian MMA fan knows Agilan Thani’s story. In just 4 years, Thani went from being an overweight kid with bleak future prospects to becoming MIMMA welterweight champion and undefeated ONE Championship fighter with a streak of four consecutive stoppage victories.

         Thani owes his transformation all to martial arts, and it was nothing short of amazing. When he took his first ONE Championship bout back in March 2015, Thani had already lost about 55kg, or 30 percent of his body weight, since he began training. After his successful ONE debut, Thani, who is fighting out of Monarchy MMA gym in Kuala Lumpur, went on to dominate in two more fights, winning both of them via submission.

      Thani will face Brad Robinson at a catchweight 88kg bout, but besides being a matchup between two exciting prospects, there lies a deeper story – Robinson’s journey has uncanny parallels to Thani’s. He too, was obese, and lost close to 70kg through martial arts. Robinson moved to Singapore in 2007, and at that time he was a 150kg diabetic.

          Thani will battle Robinson in front of a 12,000-capacity crowd hoping to secure his fourth win in ONE Championship and keep his record perfect. He confesses: “It is great to be undefeated. I don’t think about it too much, because there are going to be ups and downs in my career. The main goal is to keep learning and improving. I am not afraid to fail and will continue regardless.”

He is not planning to fail, though. As usual, Thani’s game plan is to finish the fight as quickly as possible – only one out of his four professional fights to date went to the second round. He is far from taking it easy and underestimating his opponent though.

“Robinson is a well-rounded fighter. He is not bad on the ground, he has decent stand up. I am a universal fighter, too. I’ve been working on all aspects of my game during this fight camp in the US I am ready,” remarked Thani when giving his thoughts on Robinson.

For the second time in a row he chose to train in America. With help from his team at Monarchy MMA, “Alligator” traveled to California to train with Team Quest Temecula at the renowned Dan Henderson’s Athletic Fitness Centre, where fighters like Sean Strickland and Sam Alvey train.

          Speaking about his fight camp, Thani said: “Many of these fighters are my role models, so it was amazing to train with them. I wasn’t allowed to spar with any serious guys for about three weeks. I was just ragdolled by everyone, being beaten up pretty badly, but eventually they allowed me to spar with UFC and Bellator fighters.”

 Monarchy MMA, where he started as a cleaner, has two gyms in his hometown of Kuala Lumpur, but he felt he needed to go abroad and widen his horizons.

“Monarchy MMA is my base. I always feel they have my back and I learnt everything from my coaches there,” said Thani. “But one day, I want to become a world champion, so it is good for me to train with big guys and get used to that pressure. That’s what Team Quest Temecula offered me.”

 Two days before the fight, Thani is on weight and looks happy and healthy. He welcomes ONE Championship’s rules that banned weight cutting by dehydration, saying: “I was against it first, but now I really appreciate the rules and understand that [the rules] mean fighter safety [comes] first.

“I eventually realized how weak I became as a fighter when I cut too much and too quick. After a weight cut, I used to re hydrate and get bigger but not stronger, to be honest. You lose your strength and explosiveness, and I would rather keep that than my size. “The weight system at ONE Championship is good now, and I hope that with a good diet and training I can eventually drop down to my original weight of 83kg while keeping my strength and explosiveness."

            With the UFC being the most popular MMA promotion in the western world, Thani was surprised his training partners at Team Quest California were interested in fighting in ONE Championship, where Thani plies his trade. “Some American fighters even asked me if I could introduce them to ONE, so they [could] get a contract and fight in Asia,” Thani said. Most of the fighters even went: “wow, soccer kicks - cool,” every time Thani mentioned the Asian MMA promotion.

Thani considers himself lucky to have found a great team in his home country, lucky to be doing what he loves, and to be able to pay his way through life. But as for what’s on the cards for him in the future, can he say that the rest of his life will be dedicated to MMA at the age of twenty?

“I need to see the world and learn some new stuff,” he shakes his head and laughs. “But first I must achieve my ultimate goal: to become a champion in the best promotion I can get a contract with, defend my belt as many times as possible, retire happily, and slowly start doing something else.”